Section 2 - Women Make Progress
- Progressive Women Expand Reforms
- Early 1900s
- Do more than being a wife and mother
- Expand role in community
- Education helped achieve goals
- Bryn Mawr College
- School of Social Work in NY
- Trained women to lead new organizations
- Women now had
- Education
- Modern ideas
- Middle - class white women began to tackle problems in society
- Working Women Face Hardships
- Difficult Jobs
- Outside the home
- Factories
- Servants
- Laundresses
- Immigrants, African Americans, women from rural areas filled these jobs
- Little or no education
- Dangerous conditions
- Hand wages over to husband
- No right to vote
- Little influence on the politicians who could expand their rights and interests
- Reformers Champion Working Women’s Rights
- Limit the number of work hours
- Key issue
- Success
- 1903 - Oregon law capped women work hours to 10 hours
- Muller vs. Oregon - Supreme Court reviewed and said long hours harmed working women and their families
- Progressives viewed this as a victory for women
- Florence Kelley - believed women were hurt by the unfair prices of goods they had to buy to run their homes
- 1899 - helped found National Consumers League (NCL)
- Gave special labels to “goods produced under fair, safe, and healthy working conditions”
- Urged women to buy them and avoid products that did not have label
- Pushed for other reforms;
- Government to inspect meat packing plants
- Make workplaces safer
- Make payments to the unemployed
- Helped form Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL)
- Improve conditions for female factory workers
- Upper-class and working-class women served together as leaders
- Pushed for federal laws for
- Minimum wage
- 8 hour work day
- Workers’ strike fund - help support families who refused to work in unsafe or unfair working conditions
- Women Work for Changes in Family Life
- Main goal of Progressive Women
- Improve family life
- Keep families healthy and safe
- Temperance movement
- Led by Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
- Promotedtemperance - practice of never drinking alcohol
- Members though alcohol led men to spend earnings on liquor
- Neglect their families
- Abuse their wives
- Led to the passing of the 18th Amendment - outlawed the production and sale of alcohol
- Margaret Sanger - thought family life and women’s health would improve if mothers had fewer children
- Opened firth birth-control clinic
- Jailed several times as a “public nuisance”
- 1921 - founded the American Birth Control League
- Ida B. Wells - black teacher, helped form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896
- Aimed to help families strive for success
- to assist those who were less fortunate
- Provide day care centers
- Educate black children
Women Fight for the Right to Vote
- Women Suffrage
- The right for women to vote
- Only way to make sure the government would;
- Protect children
- Foster education
- Support family life
- Key Women Figures
- Jane Addams
- Susan B. Anthony
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- Tirelessly struggled for women to have a voice in the political issues
- 1890 - Wyoming and Colorado - women won the right to vote
- Catt Takes Charge of the Movement
- 1890s - national suffrage movement reenergized by Carrie Chapman Catt
- Studied law
- Worked as one of country’s first female school superintendents
- Great speaker
- Traveled country urging women to join the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
- Became VP of NAWSA in 1900
- Developed a “winning plan”
- Women lobbied Congress to pass an amendment giving women the right to vote
- Other women would use a new referendum process to try to pass state suffrage laws
- 1918 - women had right to vote in NY, Michigan, and Oklahoma
- “Society Plan” - recruit wealthy, well-educated women
- African Americans
- Mexican Americans
- Jewish immigrants
- Known as “suffragettes” - promote suffrage in their own areas
- Some Women Against Suffrage
- National Association Opposed to Women Suffrage (NAOWS)
- Believed that the effort to win the vote would take women’s attention away from family and volunteer work that benefited society in many ways
- This organization soon faded away
- Activists Carry on the Struggle
- Social Activists - grew more daring in strategies to win vote
- Alice Paul - best known leader; raised in Quaker home
- Always encouraged to be independent
- Earned Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912
- Believed drastic steps were needed to win the vote
- 1913 - recruited women across the country
- 1917 - formed the National Woman’s Party (NWP) - used public protest marches
- First group to march to White House with picket signs
- Hundreds arrested
- Some went on hunger strikes
- Did help the women gain the right to vote
- 19th Amendment Becomes Law
- June 1919 - Congress approved the 19th Amendment - which states the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex”
- August 18th, 1920 - Tennessee State House Representatives passed the amendment by 1 vote.
- This made the amendment become official